Ep. 5: The Dental Treatment Coordinator - What Should They Do?
A “Treatment Coordinator” is a common position in dental practices nowadays, but what is the job description? What should they be doing every day? And how can they help the practice increase collections and improve patient care?
Topics:
How/when did Treatment Coordinators become a “thing” – 1:10
The job description – 4:52
The word “sales” in dentistry – 7:04
The “hand off” from the doctor to Treatment Coordinator – 10:10
Should the Treatment Coordinator be in the room when the doctor is presenting treatment? - 16:20
The day-to-day job duties – 19:30
Getting incomplete treatment accepted and done – 21:38
Measuring your Treatment Coordinator’s performance – 31:29
Training and becoming great at the job – 33:18
Links:
The Dental Treatment Coordinator Training Course - https://ddssuccess.com/p/treatment-coordinator-training-course
The MGE Communication & Sales Seminars - https://www.mgeonline.com/abc
Listen to full episode :
Questions From This Episode
What is a treatment coordinator actually supposed to do?
In plain terms, it is a salesperson. The role exists to make sure every treatment plan the doctor diagnoses actually gets financial arrangements attached to it, so the patient moves forward and gets the care they need. It is not a scheduler, an assistant, or an insurance coordinator wearing a different title.
What skills should I look for when hiring a treatment coordinator?
Someone outgoing with genuine communication skills, comfortable discussing fees and finances, and personally convinced that the treatment they are presenting matters. An introverted personality or discomfort talking about money will undermine the role no matter how nice the person is otherwise.
Does a small practice actually need a treatment coordinator?
Not necessarily. If the doctor has time to discuss fees and close the case directly, a smaller practice does not need one. Hiring a treatment coordinator specifically so the doctor can avoid that conversation just masks a sales problem instead of solving it.
How should a treatment coordinator work an incomplete treatment list?
Not primarily by phone. Patients due soon for hygiene are simply left until that visit. Patients overdue for hygiene get scheduled for a cleaning without treatment being raised at all. Only patients with a real, doctor-flagged health concern who are months away from their next visit get called and offered a complimentary consultation to check that nothing has gotten worse.
What metrics show whether a treatment coordinator is actually doing the job well?
Two numbers matter together: total dollar value of treatment presented, and total dollar value of treatment actually closed, meaning proper financial arrangements were made. Comparing the two exposes whether a coordinator is only collecting what insurance covers instead of closing full treatment plans.
Episode Transcript
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Jeff: Do you have a treatment coordinator in your dental practice? Do you need one? And what exactly are they supposed to be doing on a day to day basis? And what metrics should you be using to determine their value to your practice? We'll be talking about this and a whole lot more in this week's episode of Dental Business Rx: The Dental Treatment Coordinator Position, What Should They Be Doing?
Jeff: I'm Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host, and I'll be joined shortly by Sabri Blumberg, the Deputy Chief Operating Officer here at MGE. Sabri is in charge of all of our technical delivery, and what we're going to be doing is breaking this position down. We're going to be exploring just about every aspect of it.
Jeff: So if you have a treatment coordinator, or if you're looking at hiring one now or at some point in the future, this is an episode you're not going to want to miss. So I think we have Sabri all set up now. Sabri, are you with us?
Sabri: I am.
Jeff: Okay, good. She's actually sitting right in front of me, I'm just making sure her audio is going.
Sabri: So obviously it is.
Jeff: Yeah? Okay, good. So, treatment coordinator. First question, you talk to a lot of our clients on a day to day basis. How often are you asked about this position?
Sabri: Quite often, actually.
Jeff: Like a couple times a day?
Sabri: Well, no, not a couple times a day. And I think there's a better understanding now of what it is than there was, let's say, five or ten years ago.
Jeff: Yeah, because the position started sort of in ortho. That is where it originates from.
Sabri: It started out in ortho, because in ortho they had a position that was solely focused on sales. The doctor would do the diagnosis, and then the treatment coordinator would sell the treatment plan. This was an isolated position from the rest of the organization. That's all they did. And they called it a treatment coordinator.
Jeff: I think the full name, what I heard several times when I'd go visit various orthodontists in my treks across the US over the years, was treatment plan coordinator. That was the full position name.
Sabri: Yeah, and that probably was a better name for the position than just treatment coordinator, because it's more descriptive.
Jeff: And also, don't we find a lot of people, when they first bring one in, having them do all types of random things?
Sabri: Well, that's the interesting thing. When treatment coordinators started entering general dentistry, that's when the confusion began over what exactly they are and what exactly they do. A treatment coordinator could be anything from a scheduler to, I've seen assistants be treatment coordinators.
Jeff: Okay, so just depending on the viewpoint of the doctor.
Sabri: I see, because there was no position in dentistry where we had one isolated person who just sold treatment plans, and especially in smaller practices that really wasn't necessary. The doctor would do the sales. Then, over the last five or ten years, as we've seen doctors build bigger practices, whether it's multiple locations or more sales driven practices, that wasn't a thing fifteen years ago. Some people did it, but it was isolated.
Jeff: It was isolated where you saw it, but now, maybe with the advent of DSOs or whatever the reason, more private dentists are thinking bigger, building bigger practices. Now those practices are larger, they have associates, now you need a treatment coordinator.
Sabri: So they go get a treatment coordinator, but the traditional dental model doesn't lend itself to a treatment coordinator, because the doctor has always done the sales. So it just becomes this really ambiguous position.
Jeff: I see. So okay, we want to break this thing down now just for our listeners out there. I have to warn you, if Sabri and I decided to talk about everything with relation to treatment coordinator, this would basically be an audiobook.
Sabri: Pretty much.
Jeff: As a matter of fact, Sabri did an entire course, a dental treatment coordinator training course, on our online platform, DDS Success. If you want to find out more about that, you can visit it, shameless plug, at ddssuccess.com. But before we sat down to do this podcast, Sabri and I sat down to more or less hammer out what areas we wanted to cover. So I think the best way to roll with this is I'll go down the list you and I made, and you can give your feedback on that.
Sabri: Yeah, that might be the best.
Jeff: Okay, good. Obviously we don't have enough time in this podcast to make a professional treatment coordinator, that's what a course is for, but we're definitely going to hit on what they do, so listeners at least know they're focused correctly on the basic functions they're responsible for.
Sabri: Fair enough.
Jeff: All right, so I'm going to run down our list of questions and let you roll. First: what is the purpose? Describe this position and what its purpose is.
Sabri: Okay. I guess the easiest way for me to explain it is a treatment coordinator, in a normal business, in a non-dental setting, would be called a salesperson. And that explains it right there. It's your salesperson. In a normal business, a salesperson is responsible for taking the product that the customer either needs or wants and working out the financials with them so they can afford it. It's a salesperson. That's all it is. It's not a scheduler, it's not an assistant, it's not your business assistant, it's not your insurance coordinator. It's a salesperson.
Jeff: Interesting. And what type of skill sets would you be looking for? If I'm hiring a treatment coordinator, what am I looking for in that prospect?
Sabri: I would want somebody that is obviously friendly, somebody that's outgoing. You can't have an introverted salesperson, someone afraid to talk to people or not excited about the product they're selling. So you want somebody outgoing, and I'm not necessarily talking about bubbly. You're looking for somebody with excellent communication skills.
Jeff: Okay, so when you say bubbly, just to clarify, we're not necessarily looking for a social butterfly.
Sabri: No. I'm looking for somebody who can communicate. That doesn't mean necessarily that they're conservative, but if they can communicate calmly and are genuinely interested in the person they're talking to, and interested in the product they're selling, there has to be some personal conviction on the salesperson's part in the product they're selling in order for them to be effective at sales.
Jeff: Yeah. And obviously they have to be comfortable discussing fees and finances.
Sabri: Yeah, yeah. You can't have somebody say, I hate money, be my treatment coordinator. Or, I hate taking money, or I'm uncomfortable discussing money. That's obviously not going to make a successful salesperson.
Jeff: And part of it, since we're used to talking about the concept of sales, this is something we go over very early on with an MGE client, essentially, you're selling as a doctor. But there are people listening to this who aren't our clients, and they may hear the idea of sales in healthcare and freak out. How would you explain that? There might be somebody out there going, oh, sales, we don't sell, and so on.
Sabri: You provide a service, whatever that service may be. And currently in the United States, one hundred percent coverage for dental work does not exist, which means there's going to be an out of pocket expense. Ultimately, the reason patients are coming to them is because they are a doctor and they want to be healthy. It's up to the dentist to educate the patient and be their doctor, and get the patient on board, or at least explain why executing the treatment plan they feel is best is in the patient's interest. They almost have to create a want on the patient's part, because not everybody is at a point, education wise, where they know how important dentistry actually is.
Sabri: If you take a look at the derivation of the word doctor, it's actually from Latin, and it comes from the word for teacher, docere, to teach. So the first thing a doctor does is educate their patient on what is happening with them and what they need to do to achieve optimum health, and why that would matter to them. Now, if you want to help that patient, they have to execute your treatment plan. So unless you want to do that for free, they're going to have to pay you for it. That, in essence, is why we call this sales.
Jeff: Sales.
Sabri: Yeah, and that is the definition of sales. Sales may have gotten a bad connotation at some point, but unfortunately, if you can't get people to pay you for the services you want to do with them, you're not going to help a lot of patients. In a dental practice, it's very interesting, the amount of money a practice makes is actually a direct representation of how many people they're helping. If they're getting a lot of patients but their income or collections are low, that means their patients aren't following through on their treatment plans. They're actually not helping their patients.
Jeff: And that's why, obviously, we do all the sales training early on with clients.
Sabri: Exactly. You have to be able to effectively communicate with people, effectively educate them, and be skilled enough to handle the financial end of the conversation.
Jeff: So basically, when we're looking at this treatment coordinator position, I'm the doctor, I'm presenting a treatment plan, telling the patient, we talked about this in episode one, one of the things you want to do is give the patient the fee. So I've given the patient the fee, minimally, I can go further depending on my time constraints, which I'll explain in a second. But I give the patient the fee, then I turn it over to my treatment coordinator who, so to speak, closes it, wraps it up, handles the finances, and makes sure that patient is on my schedule.
Sabri: Correct. The person who takes the money is the one closing it, period, always. Now, if it's a smaller practice and the dentist has time on their schedule to have that discussion with the patient, there's absolutely no reason for them to have a treatment coordinator. If I have a practice doing forty or fifty thousand a month, the only reason I'd have a treatment coordinator is because the doctor doesn't want to have that discussion.
Jeff: But then that's a problem.
Sabri: Exactly, that is a problem. If a client showed up and said, I have a treatment coordinator because I don't like discussing fees, that's exactly why they're only doing forty or fifty thousand a month, and doing just what insurance covers. So you don't want to replace what you can do, especially when it's something that impacts the growth and health of your business so much, the sales end of it, and your ability to actually deliver your product, which is a healthy patient, and to help people. This is a skill every business owner has to develop, unfortunately. So treatment coordinators in smaller practices simply cover up the doctor's inability to have this discussion.
Jeff: And usually, what I've seen with clients, tell me if I'm wrong, is as they're starting to expand, the doctor is picking up and getting better at selling. Usually the office manager is being the treatment coordinator, and eventually it gets to the point where the office manager is doing five, six, seven treatment presentations with the doc a day. You don't have a manager anymore. Now you've got to get a treatment coordinator.
Sabri: Right, and well before it gets to that point, you want a treatment coordinator. You also don't want to turn your manager into the treatment coordinator. I had somebody ask me that recently, their manager was a very good treatment coordinator and also the manager, and the question was, why not just make the manager the treatment coordinator and get another manager? And I said, here's the problem.
Jeff: We're going completely off the rails here.
Sabri: It's totally fine. It's like, in the hierarchy of personnel you're trying to build, we've gone from the mindset in the industry that there are front desk people and back office people. So obviously with an MGE client, they're starting to specialize these positions a bit, there's a scheduling coordinator, a financial coordinator, and so on. But as far as finding personnel, in my experience, it's harder to find a good treatment coordinator than, let's say, a scheduling coordinator.
Jeff: Yeah, absolutely.
Sabri: Eventually maybe a scheduling coordinator is good and moves up to the point where they're familiar enough to become a treatment coordinator, but it's harder to just find one right off the bat. It's a lot harder to find a great office manager than a great treatment coordinator.
Jeff: Correct, and the reason being that being a good treatment coordinator is simply one of the skills we expect an office manager to have. It's one of the things they need to be able to do. Your office manager needs to be able to do every position in that organization competently. But that's the same as saying, my office manager's a great scheduler, so I'm going to have them be the scheduler. Or a great dental assistant.
Sabri: Sometimes you do see the office manager being the dental assistant. It's the exact same thing. And we've had some of our best office managers start at chairside.
Jeff: Yeah, some of the best managers who've come through the MGE program.
Sabri: Exactly. But what people do dictates what position they wear. So to call a dental assistant an office manager is silly, unless they start becoming the office manager, and that's a whole different function. Funnily enough, an office cannot survive without an office manager. A business cannot survive without somebody running it and taking it somewhere.
Jeff: All right. So based on this, sorry, I'm going to go, because I could go off into the office manager thing for the next five hours too.
Sabri: We are doing another podcast about that.
Jeff: Are we? Oh, right. Okay. So what we get from this: one, it's a sales position. Two, we're looking for somebody with good communication skills, comfortable talking finance, not backed off or freaked out by that.
Sabri: Correct, and they have some personal conviction, they have to believe that what they're selling is important.
Jeff: And then, we can't have a treatment coordinator just replace the doctor's willingness to sell. The doctor also has to be able to sell.
Sabri: Correct.
Jeff: And if you're a manager and you happen to be wearing this treatment coordinator hat a bit, you have to watch it, because if that starts to spiral out of control, to where you're being the treatment coordinator more and more, you need to get one.
Sabri: Correct. And the other thing you can take a look at is, maybe we only see our manager doing three or four case presentations a day, and we consider this manageable. Then, if we step back and look at how many patients we have with outstanding treatment plans that aren't scheduled or aren't coming in to get that treatment done, that's what the treatment coordinator would ordinarily be working on.
Jeff: Which is what I was going to ask you about in a second.
Sabri: Sorry, go ahead and finish.
Jeff: No, finish your sentence.
Sabri: But that's what the treatment coordinator would be working on when they're not with patients. The manager isn't doing that. So again, we're missing out on so much treatment that could be getting completed, simply because we don't have both an office manager and a treatment coordinator.
Jeff: Fair enough. Okay, one last question, I know this wasn't on our approved list, but I'm going to ask you, because I get asked this a lot when I'm lecturing, and you probably do too. The doctor's doing a treatment presentation. When should the treatment coordinator be in the room with the doc?
Sabri: It depends on the size and type of sale being made. If I have a very large treatment plan, let's say I'm presenting a sixty thousand dollar treatment plan, the doctor's going to want that treatment coordinator with them the entire time. If it's just a couple of units the patient needs to complete their treatment plan, the doctor can just hand it off to the treatment coordinator afterward.
Jeff: So three or four inlays, sure, fine.
Sabri: Yeah, it completely depends on the size of the case. Also, if it's an existing patient we've been talking to about this, and now we're having that final conversation, is it critical the treatment coordinator is there? I'd like them to be there if it's a larger case, but it's not absolutely critical. If it's a new patient, that's unpredictable, we don't know how they're going to respond, because the doctor may have handled certain things with that patient that the treatment coordinator was completely unaware of, since they weren't there.
Jeff: I see. So during the discussion, the patient brought up an objection, the doctor handled it, but the treatment coordinator didn't see that.
Sabri: Didn't see that. Now the patient comes to the treatment coordinator and brings up that same objection again. First of all, the treatment coordinator doesn't know how the doctor handled it.
Jeff: I see. So you want to handle it the same way.
Sabri: Second of all, that's a bit of a problem, why isn't this being handled, or maybe there's something else the patient is concerned about, and now they're just throwing out objections to get away from the treatment coordinator. It happens in sales, people run away when you're trying to sell them.
Jeff: Which, by the way, I have to mention, this is about you. Sabri did the entire treatment coordinator training course on DDS Success. It's close to, I think Adam, our producer, would say, four and a half or five hours long. It's a big course, and a lot of it is training on how to do the job, what you do day to day, but there are also all the demo scenarios. We threw some great demos in there, because Sabri took all comers there, she was going to handle it. I think one of them was, and you've probably had this happen if you're listening at home, where the doctor presents the treatment plan, sends the patient off to the treatment coordinator, doc leaves the room, finishes the handoff, and the patient says, yeah, I'm not doing this. I think you did that in one of the demos, right?
Sabri: Yes.
Jeff: Yeah, thanks, doctor.
Sabri: Yeah, I'm not doing this. And these are things that actually happen. So there are ways to handle this, and we're not going to get into them for the sake of brevity, but a lot of it can be avoided. It's far more painful with these bigger cases, where the doctor has invested so much time, so you want the treatment coordinator there the entire time. It should be very smooth.
Jeff: All right, I'm going to stay on task now. So describe to everybody listening, if you could, what exactly this job looks like. What are they doing on a day to day basis? I think everybody understands the idea that they're at treatment presentations, but describe what else they do. Lay out the day however you want.
Sabri: If I could take a step back into what the treatment coordinator should be taking responsibility for, we'll start there. What is the big statement of their job? They are there to assist the doctor and make sure that every single treatment plan the doctor has diagnosed has financial arrangements.
Jeff: Wouldn't that be great.
Sabri: That'd be awesome. Every single patient under the care of the practice is either actively working on getting healthy, or already healthy and being maintained in hygiene.
Jeff: All right, so financial arrangements are done, and they're on the schedule to get their treatment done.
Sabri: Correct, because why does a dental practice exist after all, to get a healthy patient. Not to get a healthier patient, or to do dentistry, you're a doctor's office, your patient should be healthy. So that doesn't mean the treatment coordinator is only responsible for selling the cases that come their way. That would be an extremely limited view, only selling when they're here or when somebody sends them because they need to buy something.
Jeff: Okay, so I'm a new patient, in the practice, the doctor saw me and sends me to you, or I'm a recall patient, doctor saw me again and sent me to you.
Sabri: That would be a very limited scope of the job, because what about all those patients on the incomplete treatment list, if you print that out of your software. It's usually one of the first things I have new clients get me, a list of all their incomplete treatment, just to get an idea of how much backlog of sales there is, and it's usually ridiculously long.
Jeff: All right, let me ask you a quick question, I don't want to be that host who interrupts all the time, but I have to ask this, because I get this a lot. So I'm a treatment coordinator, doing three treatment presentations today, two new patients and a patient of record coming out of recall. That's two to three hours of my day. So you just mentioned stuff about incomplete treatment lists, since that's what I'm going to be doing the rest of my day. Could you describe how you'd approach that? You're working the incomplete treatment list, or the overdue list you mentioned, how does that look?
Sabri: Okay, obviously we're doing the follow ups.
Jeff: Yeah, you mentioned the follow ups. That makes sense, so that's the person who was in last week and I'm following up.
Sabri: Correct, and that's important. Now, the one thing we don't want to do with that incomplete treatment list is call them and try to sell them dentistry over the phone.
Jeff: Interesting.
Sabri: So I'm not calling that list going, hi Jeff, this is Sabri from ABC Dental, how are you doing today. And you go, I'm fine. And I don't go, listen, remember those two crowns the doctor talked to you about, are you ready to schedule them. No, I'll just talk to you guys next time I'm in.
Jeff: Exactly, and you just said it, next time I'm in. It's far easier to sell somebody the treatment they need when they're in front of you than over the phone.
Sabri: It's funny, that list is never a good source for filling the schedule.
Jeff: You get lucky.
Sabri: You do get lucky, it does happen, and that's fine, but you don't want to plan your day on that. The most important thing I'm going to be doing is trying to get the patients with outstanding treatment back into the practice. Now, there are two different ways to do that. I can bring them in through hygiene. If they're scheduled for hygiene soon, I'm not going to bring it up early, I'll just wait until they come in.
Jeff: Let's say you come in next month, why should I call you back in? If you do not have a hygiene appointment and you're due for one, I'm just going to schedule you to come in for your cleaning, I'm not even going to bring up your treatment.
Jeff: Interesting, so you're going to do that as the treatment coordinator.
Sabri: Absolutely, you're not going to wait until the scheduler does it. Because I am the salesperson, which means I have a responsibility for making sure certain sales quotas get made. I assume in your practice the doctor has a collections target they're going for each month. But how do you think those collections get made? Through sales, they don't get made through production.
Jeff: That has been how it's done, it's just a little backwards, you can't produce it unless it's sold first.
Sabri: True. Obviously it does need to be produced, but you're not going to produce on somebody and work out the money afterward, I hope, some people do that, but it's a very bad idea, you end up with a big accounts receivable. So if I have a certain collections target I'm responsible for making, that means I have to sell a certain amount of dentistry every day. You might send me three or four patients today with outstanding treatment plans, but if that's not enough to make the number I'm going for, I need to augment that with more sales. So I'm going to make sure there's enough sales on the schedule every day to make sure that quota gets made. Don't forget, I am a salesperson, and don't forget those sales represent how many people we're actually helping.
Sabri: That is the most important thing everybody needs to keep in mind here, as we're saying sales to people who may not have heard that represented in a dental practice before, and going, oh my goodness, we don't sell, we are a professional establishment. You won't be an establishment for very long if you refuse to sell, because there won't be any money to keep your business going.
Jeff: True. All right, so if I'm on an incomplete treatment list and scheduled for hygiene in the near future, you're just going to wait until I come in, you're not going to bother with that. If I'm on the list and due or overdue for hygiene, you're just going to schedule me to come in, not even bring up the treatment.
Sabri: Absolutely, I'm just going to schedule you for your hygiene appointment.
Jeff: Which, again, is the reason I asked, that's kind of a new idea, not a lot of people think that way. They go, oh, that's the scheduler's job, and that would be great if the scheduler had time to do all of that, but apparently not, otherwise they wouldn't be on the incomplete treatment list with no hygiene appointment. So you're staying in control of getting those people back into the practice.
Sabri: Correct.
Jeff: Okay, so here's the third scenario, and I thought your solution for this was excellent. Let's say I'm on the incomplete treatment list, on six month recalls, I was in two months ago, and I'm not due for another four months. Are you going to wait for four months to call me, or what are you going to do?
Sabri: Depends what it is. If it's something aesthetic that can wait, fine. But if it's a health related issue the doctor diagnosed you for and did not want you to wait on, I'm going to call you and bring you back in for a complimentary consultation.
Jeff: All right, how might that look? So you're calling me, I'm scheduled for a recall four months from now, and I came in two months ago and told the doc I was going to think about it and left the practice for the day.
Sabri: I'd say, hey Jeff, this is Sabri from ABC Dental, how are you doing today.
Jeff: Oh, hey Sabri.
Sabri: Listen, the doctor wanted me to reach out to you. Do you remember the last time you were here, the doctor wanted you to do those three crowns for those cracked teeth.
Jeff: Oh, yeah, I told him I was going to think about it.
Sabri: No, that's totally fine, I totally understand, we know that's a big decision. The doctor asked me to reach out and schedule you for a complimentary consultation just so he can have a look at it, make sure everything's stable until you're ready to proceed.
Jeff: I'm coming in four months, can't we just do it then?
Sabri: He is definitely going to look at it in four months, but four months is a long time from now, and I assume you're planning on using your teeth between now and then.
Jeff: I am.
Sabri: So since they're cracked, he just wants to make sure it's not getting worse.
Jeff: Got it. How long is it going to take?
Sabri: It's twenty minutes.
Jeff: Okay, and then we just go ahead and schedule it.
Sabri: Exactly.
Jeff: Yeah, I thought that was awesome. I've talked to a lot of clients who have done that, it's worked out really well.
Sabri: But sometimes, and we can't get into the mechanics of it, we go over this in our sales seminars, the ABCs, there's a certain sales process this person's in the middle of.
Jeff: Yeah, and they've been in the middle of it, you know what I'm talking about.
Sabri: I totally know what you're talking about, and for any of you clients out there, you know what I'm talking about too. But aside from that, me just saying, hey Jeff, this is Sabri from ABC Dental, I want you to come in and talk to the doctor about those three crowns you're not ready to do now, that would just get, no, I don't want to do that right now, I already told the doctor no.
Jeff: No, I totally understand, but the doctor really wants to talk to you about it.
Sabri: Yeah, that's going to go over really well.
Jeff: But I like that you're having them come in to check that it's stable, it gives the doctor another shot to talk to them.
Sabri: Yeah, and the truth is they do need it, and how often do we hear stories where they didn't follow up, the cracked tooth didn't get crowned, and now they come in as a root canal on an emergency.
Jeff: That's true, we hear it so often.
Sabri: We do, and every doctor has a story like that, if not multiple.
Jeff: That's exactly right. That's why it's interesting, because I've heard from a lot of clients, since I know you've told quite a few clients to do this, how they had patients they'd started the process with, presented it, something came up, and the patient didn't convert that day. Then they brought them back in for what you're describing, and they were able to finish the sales process at that point.
Sabri: Absolutely, I've heard that a lot. Usually when the patient comes back in, they proceed with the treatment at that point, they know they need it.
Jeff: Yeah, because then I come in next week, let's say, if I'm the four month from now recall guy.
Sabri: Yeah, it'll be like, yeah, you're right, I should probably just do this. It doesn't matter whether a person has money or not, and there aren't that many people who enjoy being sold.
Jeff: That's true, though it does happen, I do know people who enjoy being sold.
Sabri: It's rare. And that doesn't mean that just because the patient doesn't enjoy being sold, they aren't thrilled to have the treatment completed. It's just something you have to help them through.
Jeff: Fair enough. Okay, so last question, if I could, I know you mentioned something about consults earlier as we were going, and I didn't have that on our approved question list, so I figured you might want to talk about it.
Sabri: Oh, Lord.
Jeff: So a consult, in the scenario we just talked about, is that considered a consult?
Sabri: Okay, so that, and we talked about this in episode one of the podcast, setting aside consult time.
Jeff: Yes, so this is the type of thing we would put in consult time, among other things.
Sabri: It's essentially time reserved for sales.
Jeff: Got it, and this is a sale, so I'm going to stick it into consult time. That was an easy answer.
Sabri: There we go.
Jeff: Okay, so last question, metrics. How am I measuring whether my treatment coordinator is doing a good, mediocre, or bad job? What am I using to measure their performance?
Sabri: Okay, so ultimately, since the viability of your business is tied to how much sales you do, the overall statistic for a treatment coordinator is total dollar value of treatment closed. In other words, how much treatment was closed that week, month, and so on.
Jeff: How would you define closed in this sense, though?
Sabri: Meaning proper financial arrangements were made, and that's a big deal. I've talked to people before who say, yeah, I presented six crowns, the patient's doing two a year with what insurance covers. That's not closed, is it? Only two are closed.
Jeff: That's a good point, so they get to count two.
Sabri: Right, but that's the main statistic. Now, one other statistic you'd have them keep is total dollar value of treatment presented, so when you run into a scenario where the patient really needs six crowns and you're only closing two, that discrepancy shows up if you compare those two stats against each other.
Jeff: I see. Hey, I'm only selling thirty percent, only selling what insurance covers, I obviously need some help with my sales, I'm not doing a good job getting the patient to take responsibility beyond what their insurance will cover.
Sabri: Got it.
Jeff: Yeah, okay, cool. Obviously we could go on with this forever. So here's one last thing, anything else you want to add before we wrap up, as far as becoming a better treatment coordinator or selecting one? Anything that comes to mind, anything you want to say to sum it up?
Sabri: Just like with any position, whether you're a treatment coordinator, an assistant, a hygienist, a doctor, or an office manager, whatever your position is, what makes you a professional is the amount of training or education you have in that subject, and how much drilling or role playing you've actually done in it. So you're not going to go from not being good at this to being a good treatment coordinator without education and drilling, it's just not going to happen. It's the same as, theoretically, if I get a brand new dentist out of dental school who's had a lot of education but no practice, they have to actually do it.
Jeff: Yeah, but they practice on typodonts and other things first.
Sabri: Right, I see what you're saying, they've done no practical work, it's all been classroom learning.
Jeff: Ugh, yeah, that probably wouldn't work.
Sabri: Correct, assuming they even made it past the boards. So you want those two components to make a professional out of somebody, and then of course you do it on the real deal over and over until you get good at it. Same with a treatment coordinator, there are very few natural salespeople, and even if somebody is a natural salesperson, the number of pieces that go into this position, because it's not just how much money you make, it's also whether every patient under your care has proper financial arrangements for the treatment they need in order to be healthy. That's the job.
Jeff: Interesting, that's the job.
Sabri: So to follow up on that: how do you organize your day, how do you construct the schedule so it's a proper balance between sales and production, how do you utilize the doctors, how do you interface with the hygienists, all of that. It's quite a job, probably one of the bigger jobs, combined with the office manager, in a dental practice, and a very important one for the right practice. Treatment coordinator is not for every practice. So if you are going to be one, or hire one, make sure this person has the education and the drilling they need, or you provide it, to become good at it.
Jeff: Got it, which, as I was mentioning earlier, they could do the DDS Success treatment coordinator course.
Sabri: Obviously I'm biased toward that one, because I delivered it.
Jeff: But also, there's the communication and sales training we do at MGE.
Sabri: Exactly. And if you are a doctor, you need a lot more than a treatment coordinator course, because your business depends on your ability to sell and deliver dentistry.
Jeff: Okay, good. Sabri, as always, thank you, you were awesome, very much appreciated. And folks, we'll put all the links for everything mentioned in this podcast up on the podcast page. I think that sums up the whole position really well.
Sabri: Yeah. And if you have any questions, we always appreciate any questions or feedback.
Jeff: You can email us at info@mgeonline.com, or you can email me personally at jeffb@mgeonline.com, or Sabri at sabrib@mgeonline.com. We will see you at the next episode. Till then, do great.